Transcription:

Angela: It is. Happy new year, everyone. I hope everyone had a really great Christmas and you enjoyed, maybe, some time off with your family. I know we had some time off and lots of family time.

Scott: We did.

Angela: Lots of family time, but back at it, so super excited. Today we're sharing some tips on how to get your video marketing done really easily, aren't we?

Scott: Right.

Angela: It's a new year, and it's time to put all those excuses behind of why you're not doing video marketing. And I think one of the big things is people think it's a huge time commitment, and maybe the first time it's a little more but it actually doesn't take long at all. It's just concentrated time, right?

Scott: Absolutely.

Angela: We're gonna share how we do our video marketing, a whole month's worth, in less than half a day from beginning to end, from writing scripts to shooting and getting the videos up on a few of the social media channels that we like, right?

Scott: Yeah, absolutely.

Angela: Let us know. Say "Hi", say, "Happy new year." Let us know that you're here. We'd love to hear from you and would also like to hear from you if you are doing video marketing. If you have any tips to share, please chime in and we'll make sure we read them out and share them with everyone. Did you want to get started?

Scott: Sure.

Angela: All right.

Scott: Ang decided on the topic today and she's got down here five tips, so I think we should probably just go through those one at a time. Do you want me just to start?

Angela: Yeah.

Scott: I feel like I'm ... Last Tuesday, we took off. Obviously, it was Boxing Day, so we took last Tuesday off, so I'm a little rusty with the live here, even getting set up this morning, but it's new year. I need to get back on top of the video marketing, so we've got five tips and I'm just going to go over them real quick, and then we're going to go into a little more detail with them over the next 10 minutes or so.

The first one is definitely planning and scheduling your video marketing in advance. The second is knowing in advance what your topics are going to be. Third is following an outline or a structure, a simple script, each time, so you don't have to put a lot of thought into it. What is your type and providing the value with a call to action. We're going to go into detail on that, as well, and block shooting. It's what we call block shooting. It's a term we bore from the film industry and we'll explain that in a bit its very smart effective use of your time if you've got a lot of video content you wanna hit out and finally is not just scheduling the time that you're going to shoot these videos but actually scheduling a time that you're going to post these videos and you can automate that through a lot of the social media apps, some you can't, there is ways around that or you can just go on and do it, just make sure its scheduled in your calendar so you don't forget to post them all on their platforms at the same time.

Angela: Natively. We'll go into that after.

Scott: Yeah, which is really important. So planning and scheduling your time.

Angela: Yeah I think that's really important and you know even with our Facebook lives ... we come on Tuesday mornings, but for a few year, we come on Tuesday mornings at 10am and its something that we scheduled a long time ago and I think its really important because if we didn't then we would probably find instead of changing the day we do our lives we would probably find reasons or really excuses why not to them or why we weren't doing them. And so planning and scheduling your time is super important for when you're going to shoot your videos and we're going to show you how to do it in half a day.

So I'm actually going to give you a task, if you're watching this live, I want you to go and grab your planner or grab your computer if you use a scheduling app, I know I use google calendar, but whatever app you use. And we're gonna go and get whatever it is you use to schedule your time and I'm gonna give you a few seconds to do that, because I think its really important because if you can find a half a day a month and schedule it in, then do it now instead of waiting til the videos over. And go like "Yeah, hey, there's a half a day for me there".

It will make this so much more successful in the way of once you've scheduled that time then schedule the same day of every month, so if it's the third Tuesday or the fourth Wednesday I want you to take that time and plan a half a day when you're going to work on your video writing and filming and distribution. So go ahead and look at your calendar and find a time and you know what's really great about this Scott? Because marketing is really overwhelming for small businesses right? And we'll wear so many hats and this is part of marketing, but by scheduling your time to do your video marketing, in that same time you're actually kind of doing some other things, you're writing articles, and you're writing blogs because the same content can be repurposed, so the next time someone says "Hey, can you share your expertise, or send me an article on this?". Its actually already kind of done in the script you're gonna write.

So in this half day, think about this is not just your video marketing time, but its time that you're writing content that you can use to repurpose for other things.

So okay. Have you done it? I want a thumbs up if you've done it, and if you're watching this on the replay its great because you could pause it and go get your schedule, go get your day planner and wherever it is and schedule that half day block. So once you've done that, if you're watching it live, the thumbs up or if you're watching it on the replay do a thumbs up as well so we can catch you later on that.

Okay so now they've got their half day planned out.

Scott: Okay?

Angela: What's next?

Scott: I'm following your lead here, I don't know. You're going off on little tinges and number two. Tip number two would be topic ideas, having your ideas planned in advance I guess its kind of what you were talking about during that half day, that you've devoted to work on your videos.

Coming up with those topics and you don't have to have the solid script idea done, but you don't have to follow that structure at all. Its just to idea. And we go into a lot of detail about where to come up with these tips and ideas and we unfortunately don't have enough time today to cover all that but just knowing that you need to have those ideas or those tips that, that free value information done in advance. I recommend having 12 done, you only really need four for that month because you should be posting your videos weekly, but I still believe that you should have those 12 ideas at the beginning of your season or three months, when you're gonna do your video marketing.

But its having those ideas down in advance, its very easy then to pull out that sheet with your 12 ideas on it and just go "Okay, today I'm going to do number one, number three, number seven and number 10. Those are ones that really speak to me right now, really speak to my target audience right now, so I'm gonna spend time just writing those videos in this next four hour chunk". If you gotta sit down during that four hour time, and you know like "Oh thinking about what would be a good video and is this a good idea". If you've done that work in advance, all you gotta do is pull that sheet and it'll save a huge amount of time and yeah, you'll get in the habit of once a month you "Okay, it's time to release my pre-recorded videos". Pull out those 12 ideas pick the four or five and just shoot them, get them done.

Angela: Yeah, and those ideas will come to you in weird times as well. A client will ask you a question and you'll realize it's a question you've been asked before, jot that down. You'll be in the car driving and an idea will come to you, just take a time when you think of those helpful tips that you can share to help other people and write those tips down, and then that's what Scott's saying pull them out when you're ready to outline and follow a structure.

Scott: Right, which is number three.

Angela: Number three is ... so you've got those few tips, like Scott said 12 is great but as long as you got four that's all that really matters right? Now you're sitting down and you're following a simple script structure ... so our structure is this, there is the opening or the intro which is kind of like the headline, what makes people continue to watch your video right? How you're helping them. One minute of content is kind of the meat and potatoes and a call to action. That's it. it's a simple structure. That's all you really need to know. Now some people have a hard time keeping it to two minutes, so its really important to ... you know your meat and potatoes, your content, one minute. One minute is about a 120 to 150 words I mean don't quote me on that, its somewhere like that, so you don't have to write a lot.

Scott: And I actually recommend don't write that at all. I personally ... everyone has their own strategy and works for them ... but I wouldn't focus on 120 words, I would focus on point form, when it comes to the content that's in the middle you're an expert so when you pick your idea ... you could probably write down one bullet point, or maybe three just to keep you on track ... like today we've got our five bullet points on what we wanted to talk about. Same with the short pre-recorded video, I wouldn't personally write things down verbatim I've seen people do this. What ends up happening is they feel like they've got to read from the script to they get so focused on trying to memorize the script that it doesn't come out naturally whereas like right now I've got one note here that says "Outline script follow simple structure".

And because I'm an expert I understand my field like you are in your field. It becomes very easy for you to talk about that topic because you are an expert and if you follow that strateg- ... some people worry that "Well I'm not gonna have enough to say if I've only got one bullet point down". But you will expand on that idea and you'll be surprised you're gonna have to figure out how to simplify that message, which is better heres the valuable tip I'm going to give you and if you can give it someone in less than 60 seconds, that does so much well for them, but for you as well. The whole purpose of doing these marketing videos is to demonstrate yourself as an expert and create that trust like know factor.

Focusing on keeping that short is really important and go back to intro of the structure ... yeah it is simple but you do need to spend a lot of time especially on that first 10 seconds, whatever comes out of your mouth in those first 10 seconds is critical you need to hook people, your target audience, hook them ... you got to get to the value right away, thinking about headlines and stuff like that. You need to almost have a headlines in the first 10 seconds to inspire people to watch the rest of the video.

And then the final part a call of action. Make sure you have some sort of call of action. I think engagement is most important, it's just trying to get a conversation going at the end of your video where people can comment in the box below.

Angela: Yeah, and now the one thing we didn't really talk about is the type of video we're talking about here. We're actually talking about pre-recorded marketing videos, not sales videos, not lives videos. So when you're thinking about the content ... this content isn't necessarily going to be "Here's my product and here's why its so great, and here's how you buy it". This is really showing you as the expert at something that's really shareable, showing you as the expert giving someone a free tip that will help them on their live. And so that's the content we're talking about and I just wanted to back track because I don't that I was clear on that first.

So following that script structure and writing all of your four scripts at once and if this is the first time you've ever down this the first ones gonna take a little longer and then the second one will take a little less time, buy the time you've written your fourth one you've kind of got a flow and a thought flow and it will be really easy. So you should be able to write your four scripts in an hour ish maybe even less.

Scott: Yeah, I agree once people ... the trickiest that video marketing for me is just getting started and your first one honestly it's gonna suck, mine did. But the next ones gonna suck less and they're gonna get better and better so I think the same goes for the amount of time that's required to get your scripts written down and "Oh, I gotta do my four videos". You're gonna get to a point where you're just gonna sit down and "Well what's the tip, what's the vital thing, and this is structure". And you're just gonna start banging these things out and that's the best thing because you gotta be consistent with video marketing.

Angela: Yeah for sure.

Scott: So number four, fourth tip is block shooting. Block shooting is a term I borrowed from the film industry so its what we gonna talk about isn't exactly the same thing but when they shoot a television show, they often shoot one episode at a time over a seven day period. But sometimes what they'll do is they'll block shoot, so they've got two episodes or three episodes in a row and there's a scene that takes place in the living room, they're gonna shoot the living room scene from episode one and two and three all on the same day it's called block shooting. So it's a very effective use of time and then all they have to do is change the actor's wardrobe so it looks like a different day.

So that's kind of what we talking about with block shooting, so if you pick your four videos that you're going to shoot you're gonna block shoot them. This is our set so this is where we would block shoot our set, so we would have our four videos and we would shoot our one video and then stop and potentially we're doing three, then we would change our wardrobe so it looks like a different day and then shoot the next one and then change the wardrobe again and shoot the next one and then we would release those a week at a time. So on Wednesday at 3 o'clock we'd release one, then the following Wednesday at 3 o'clock we'd release the other and the audience is no wiser and it doesn't really matter anyway because you're providing the same value. But it's a very effective use of your time.

Once you get your camera up, you got your audio all set up, if you have some sort of lighting ... to have to do that every time it eats into a lot of time, we're talking probably ... you're gonna save probably four to six hours believe it or not. I believe that because I know how picky I can get with my framing and stuff so, block shooting is a really effective strategy and we highly recommend it, we've had some clients in the past ... we've had one client in particular in the past that hired us for a two day shoot and we shot 52 videos all in one sitting, he changed his wardrobe and then what he did with those 52 videos ... they were short, they were really short.

Angela: Some of them were 10 seconds 15 seconds.

Scott: Yeah, they were really, really short so I don't know how much ... anyway it was an interesting strategy but the point is that he shot 52 videos in a one hour day, sorry two full day shoots. But he was able then just walk away from his video marketing hit automate, and then every week one of these 52 videos would automatically be distributed to his ... and it was actually his email list, so he already had an email list and he was providing value that way. But such an effective use of his time. And then after those 52 videos replayed, he just replayed them again, it's like television syndication you just put it replay again as long as there's lots of value there, that's okay to replay your videos.

Okay and so number five is-

Angela: So scheduling your posts natively. I know there's a lot of apps. We haven't really found one that we like because we like native posting so for if you're not sure what native posting is it means you take your video and you give it right to that social media platform so its not putting it on YouTube then using an app to share it everywhere. It's literally uploading that. So natively we can do to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Right? Sorry ...

Scott: Scheduling.

Angela: Scheduling. So what you wanna do is when you're done shooting your videos, and these are little short 2 minute videos you should be able to do them all in one take so from beginning to end. You can go into your video and trim your video so you take the part out where you're pressing the button. So when its ready to post you can schedule your posts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which means that even though you've shot them all today, once you've got them on your phone you can then use your YouTube app to upload it to youtube but schedule them for one week at a time and you can do that with Facebook and you can do that with Twitter as well. So that now at the end of your half day you're working away knowing for the next four weeks those platforms are all going to be uploaded on a specific schedule without doing anything. Automated.

Scott: Yeah the other big platform is Linkedin. And we're still caught in the middle of them rolling out native video so as far scheduling posts and doing native video with Linkedin it is a little tricker, you can't do it on your company page, you can do it in your personal page. So there is another solution out there, Buffer, so some of you may have heard of Buffer, it's a social media distribution platform, where you can distribute on multiple platforms all at once and it does support native video and I will inject native video onto the various platforms.

I'm not a big fan of it because I truly believe like a lot of social media experts that every post should be native to that platform in the sense that you wanna be able to ... I know the thing this morning when Ang posted about this live and she was about to tag me in it. So she's taking advantage of a Facebook feature because it's a native post, whereas if she did that in an app like Buffer, or Hootsuite or some of these other programs, you can't take advantage of some of these native tools that they have built in them, so if you're on multiple social media platforms, don't do the automatic post to Facebook, where you see that fb.me/ whatever because you couldn't get your whole sentence in there. So you can use apps like Buffer and Hootsuite to do your distribution but I strongly advise that you don't.

Like I said Linkedin, a little bit of a gray area there, right now you might have to do it manually, it's not that big of a deal, its what I've been doing. Its just going right into using your phone because you want native video ... but using your phone on Wednesday at 10 o'clock just going in and uploading the video. It's a bit of a pain right now but they're just rolling their technology out again, it only just came out I think in August, its still relativity new. That will change.

Angela: And Instagram. I'm seeing a lot more people on Instagram lately. I think Instagram has to be-

Scott: Yeah, the interesting thing with Instagram too is you can schedule that post as a promoted post through Facebook-

Angela: Facebook.

Scott: Ads, which you can then schedule as well, but then you're up against the 60 second rule as well with Instagram which makes it difficult for most of target audience who are running small businesses who the value that there gonna give is typically over a minute.

Angela: Yep. So by the end of your half day you should be able to ... again you're gonna take out your planner, if you haven't done it already and you're gonna plan the half day. You're going to keep a notepad with you do that you can jot down ideas of videos that you're gonna create. And then on that half day you're gonna sit down and outline that three script with your opening sentence, your one minute of content and then your call to action at the end. You're gonna film all four of your videos that morning or afternoon or whatever it is that you've picked. You're gonna have a change of outfits in between and then you're gonna schedule your posts. Now social media can be overwhelming and if you know your clients are only on Facebook, or the majority are only on Facebook then don't worry about scheduling them in 18 different places stick to the ones that you're with. Again Scott said if you're on Instagram your videos need to be 60 seconds so your structure you're gonna have to shorten everything a little bit and that's it.

And make sure you're adding value to someone's lives with your videos, you're not just selling your product or service. I hope you found those tips helpful, and if you have other tips whether it's while you're block shooting, if you've done anything that's really worked for you, that's made your video marketing really easy to do and less stressful, I want you to post here and share that with our viewers.

That's it for me.

Scott: That's it for you?

Angela: That's it for me.

Scott: I'm just shouting out to Cheryl. Hey Cheryl's there, Katie's there, I know Yazmine was there earlier. Thanks guys for tuning in and yeah back to work aye. I heard in Scotland that today's still a bank holiday in Scotland and I kind of wanna emigrate to Scotland. Did you not see that no? [crosstalk 00:20:24]

Angela: I didn't see that.

Scott: I think its a really smart idea. I think its hard to get going on the second, the first is always a write off for me just tired after celebrating new years.

Angela: You were very tired yesterday.

Scott: And then the second. I think the second will be good to be more of a bank holiday, spend some time talking about your goals, to make some goals, maybe tidying up the house or whatever and then getting back into the working the third I think its a really good idea, I think we should steal that idea from the Scottish.

Angela: Yeah, there you go.

Scott: All right thanks so much for tuning in and happy new year to everyone.